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Feudalism 101 – how community works

If this were the 13th century, the Bianconi family would be the feudal lords. They own four of the five hotels in Norcia, including one with a Michelin-star restaurant. All their employees are about the happiest people I’ve ever met. The other night, some friends and I splurged on a nice dinner in their fancy place, and the staff – waiting on no more than three tables – were bursting with pride in what they do so very, very well.

During that dinner, the older son, Vincenzo Bianconi, came in to chat with us about the earthquake and how the town was doing. People are going back inside, he said, (from sleeping in their cars and tents in the garden,) and life is returning to normal, even through the now hundreds of aftershocks.

Then he told us that the Bianconi were planning a party at the Salicone hotel, their sports and kid-friendly place that’s just across the field from my house. They would just put on some pizza and pop, some happy kid-music, and fun and games for families, and he urged us to come for a while.

So we did.

This is how a community works, in which “the rich” take responsibility and take up their natural leadership role.

This is how you create “community cohesion”. It wasn’t the job of the “government”.

They still know what “family stuff” means here. Facepainting, balloon animals, swimming, ping-pong, bouncy castle and general running around. And no screens.

About the authorHilary White

Hilary White is an Anglo-Canadian, who started researching, writing and lobbying in the political end of the pro-life movement in 1999, moved to Rome in 2008 and covered Vatican and European news related to "life and family issues" from a Catholic perspective until May 2015. She lived for two blessed years with her three cats and garden in the Peaceable Kingdom of Norcia, in Umbria, until the terrible day when the world fell down. Now transferred to a farm house near Perugia, with a bit of land and a large tomato patch, she continues to chant Vespers in Latin every day, and refuses to go to Rome for any reason whatsoever.
She hopes the world does not end before she can get the last of the tomatoes in.

In a Feudal society, they would be “the government”. But then, the government would be made of actual people that have a stake in the community, rather than bureaucrats trying to either do minimal work for government money, actual graft, or desire to climb the ladder into higher-level bureaucracy.

We have an aristocracy today — our celebrity and political classes. But neither has the principal of noblesse oblige that the aristocracy of old did. One thing that inheriting title does is attaches a lord to his land and people in a real way through the generations. That’s a good thing. That’s a human thing. And its one more way to act as an image of the Kingdom of Heaven that some of us will be members of, God willing.